Authors: Roberta Latow
Eden stopped at some of the old haunts where she had drunk with her friends of an afternoon. At Kolanaki, a square where everyone met to sit and watch the world go by over endless cups of coffee, ouzo or whisky, waiters recognised her and made a fuss over her return. Eden was enjoying herself but was relieved that she had not run into any old friends. She wandered the familiar streets alone and at ease with herself.
In Plaka, she returned as she had done hundreds of times to one of the old tavernas where she was recognised by the owner and made to feel welcome. He behaved as if the absence since she had dined with them had been nothing more than a short interlude. She sat alone and dined on stuffed vine leaves, roasted peppers and aubergines, pan fried squid, a grilled fish smothered in herbs and lemon, and too much wine. Strangers at the next table raised their glasses in toasts to her and, finding it unbearable that she should be dining alone, tried to convince her to join them. Eden was saved by the tactful proprietor and they finally accepted she was not lonely for company. She sent a bottle of wine to their table and shook hands with them before leaving the restaurant to return to her hotel.
Walking back from Plaka Eden was overcome with thankfulness that she had had the courage to step back in time and reassess the beauty and passion that had once been in her life. She understood that there was much work to be done now in order to live as fully as she had once done, chances to be taken. She would be fully visible once more.
But where did she begin? Not by looking for a man, sexual affairs, love, she was certain of that. And even more so when she entered the Grande B and heads turned in admiration of this beautiful, vibrant woman with a clear will to be visible to the
world, one who demanded to be seen and admired. She was quite stunned at the vision she saw of herself as she passed a long mirror. Stunned enough to stop and admire herself. She laughed aloud then and walked from the lobby to the nearly deserted bar where she ordered a champagne cocktail and raised her glass in a silent toast to new beginnings.
Eden’s mind slid back and she remembered another time in this bar. It had been a sunny afternoon in spring and she was there with an American writer, Charles Halderman, who’d thought she might like to meet Gore Vidal. That was the way Athens was then, writers and painters constantly passing through. It had been so easy to meet the famous, the talented and successful. In those days people were generous with introductions as long as you were either beautiful, talented, or someone fancied you as a quickie sexual liaison. Eden had been dazzled by Halderman’s talent and charm, and impressed by the fact that he’d had a critical success in London with his first novel. Few who knew him were not.
How naive she had been about meeting the handsome, erudite, successful writer Gore Vidal! She’d thought he would be enchanted by her own youth and beauty, her musical genius, when he had clearly not been. Even now, all these years later, she could remember the look on Vidal’s face once he found himself alone with her when Charles had gone to the bar for more drinks. The handsome looks vanished as he hissed at her, ‘What are you? Some hanger on – a would-be writer hoping Charles’s talent will rub off on you? He doesn’t want you, haven’t you figured that out?’
Clearly neither did Gore Vidal. He found her presence an intrusion and she remembered all these years later how she’d stood her ground with the literary man until Charles’s return and then made a dignified exit, smarting and concerned that he just might be right about her. Alone now, drinking her champagne cocktail, she came to terms with the truth. Though he had been wrong about her desire to be a writer Gore Vidal had been right on all the other counts.
Charles was now dead and long-forgotten. His was a flash-in-the-pan success whereas hers had been bright and consistent. As
for Gore Vidal, he was as he had always been a name to reckon with in literary circles. His was a talent that went from strength to strength. Intelligent, articulate, outspoken and oh, so clever, she could now understand why he couldn’t be bothered to be civil to her way back then. She had been unformed, searching for recognition and passionate love. What had that to do with men such as Halderman and Vidal? It had to do only with her and her own ambitions, she knew that now. How had it taken so many years for her to face her own egoism and ambition? Her passion for music had blinded her to so many other things in her life.
In the lift going up to her room there were two other passengers, a French couple. The man was attentive to his partner but before they emerged from the lift, he looked Eden over and smiled at her. It was a sensual smile. An unmistakably come-hither look passed between them as their eyes met.
To sail from Piraeus to Hydra on board Andoni’s schooner was for Eden a joy she would never forget. To see the islands basking in the winter sun of the Aegean – white rambling houses for the most part built on barren rock, only the occasional dot and dash of green trees – was for her sheer poetry. What she saw reached into her soul and engulfed the past. On this voyage of return what she was seeing was more rich and exciting than Eden’s fondest memories of her beloved Greek Islands.
When on her first visit to Greece she had seen Aegina lying in the middle of the Saronic Gulf, the first of the small chain of islands closest to Athens, she had been dazzled by the simplicity and romance of it, so quiet and serene in its unadorned beauty. It had been the first stop of the ferry taking her further on to Hydra. She had been exhausted from a tour and had wanted, needed, to get away from her work and her life.
The ferry had only stopped for a few minutes and she had watched half a dozen Greeks, several men and one woman draped in black pulling along a crying child. Bundles had been tossed down on to the quay, men instantly hard at work loading them on donkeys. The boat sailed away long before the shouting of the men and the screeching of the donkeys subsided.
Eden’s thoughts flashed forward to the second time she’d seen Aegina. She smiled to herself at the memory. By that time she’d been swept off her feet by Garfield. How in love they had been. Loving him and making him happy had become the focus of her life. Their sexual life together took them over and blinded Eden,
made her deaf to all warnings, even those signs she saw herself.
Skylark
, Andoni’s schooner, so black and sleek and glorious to look at with its burnt orange-coloured sails billowing in the wind, passed close to Aegina but did not stop. At Poros, the next island on,
Skylark
was just ahead of the ferry. Eden could see the vendors waiting for the boat to dock and the passengers to rush off to buy pistachios and rush on board again before it pulled away.
Skylark
swooped in close to the quay and the captain tossed a bag of coins to one of the vendors who tossed back plastic bags of the nuts into the waiting hands of the crew leaning over the schooner’s railings. Good-natured laughter and banter rang out as they sailed on towards Hydra.
Standing at the
Skylark
’s prow eating pistachios, the wind colder than the sunlight promised, Eden huddled into her fox collar while her old life flooded back to her and her soul began to rise again from the doldrums of invisibility. It was late-afternoon when
Skylark
dropped anchor in Hydra. The sun was still high in the sky and the port quiet, just awakening from siesta and making ready for its night life. The sight of white houses and narrow cobblestone streets winding their way from the crescent-shaped port right to the top of the hill behind made Eden’s heart race with the pleasure of return. The bell in the tower struck up its familiar sound and the water lapping against the moored boats was a symphony to Eden’s ears. She recognised every house and pictured its inhabitants, every shop, taverna and cafe, but her eyes settled not on her own house, a short climb away, but on Garfield’s. The shutters were closed, he was not in residence. Not that that affected her one way or another.
Eden found it strange that she recognised no one in the sleepy port. The people around seemed so young, so attractive, so glossy. They glanced at her with momentary curiosity, nothing lasting or meaningful. There was even a tinge of indifference. Not at all like the old days when she had been a part of the Hydra scene.
One of the many tourist shops that had sprung up since her departure was just opening its doors. Eden stopped and bought a pair of sandals. Carrying her shoes in one hand and her cello in the other, she left the port to begin the climb to her house, which
she could now see clearly. A chain of donkeys clip-clopped past her and their owner stopped and greeted her.
The years had been good to Petros. The donkey man and Eden recognised each other at once and exchanged greetings. Then he insisted on loading the cello on to Evangelia, and Eden on to Despina, and gave them a ride to her house. The Greeks have never been famed for their subtlety. He asked as many intimate questions as he could get in before they reached the walls surrounding her house and garden. There he called out and the housekeeper appeared almost at once to greet Eden.
Petros followed her into the courtyard carrying her cello. The donkeys remained outside on the narrow path between the high walls surrounding neighbouring houses. No one ever offended Petros or any of the other donkey carriers; they were the only mode of transportation on the island and everyone was dependent on them. The housekeeper, Maria, had to wipe away tears of joy at seeing Eden again. She insisted Petros remain for an Ouzo and some pieces of freshly roasted octopus which she had arranged on a table under the spreading fig tree now barren of leaves and fruit.
Eden’s house had originally been a series of small houses she had bought years ago as they came on the market. She had completed her rambling conversion twelve years before and now marvelled that the view from its terraces as they gently climbed up the hill, tier upon tier, still remained one of the best the island had to offer. From here she could see the port below her and the houses to the right and left, filling the crescent of the hillside.
At last she was alone to walk through the rooms, familiarising herself with them again. Eden had forgotten how much she loved this house. All the shutters were open and it was flooded with light. The light of Greece, even late-afternoon winter light – there is nothing in the world like it. The rooms were all painted white and furnished minimally. Every chair, table, painting, sculpture was a thing of beauty set in a space that would only enhance it. The largest of the rooms was near to being perfect in proportion, a double cube, and in it were set a pair of Bechstein pianos. Eden approached them and struck a few notes on each. They were in perfect tune. A piano tuner from Athens arrived twice a year, year
in and year out, to see that they remained so.
She was reminded of the excitement and drama of getting these pianos into her house. The entire island had turned out for the event. They had been manhandled up here under the direction of Petros the donkey man, a dozen of his friends and workers. Garfield had organised it. No matter that her Greek was better than his, and her anxiety over the instruments more acute, he had taken charge as the men would listen to him. That was something she as a woman could not achieve. The islanders, like everyone else, adored Garfield. He had been one of the first foreigners to buy a house here. The short dark Greeks were in awe of the tall handsome wide-shouldered American with his sandy blond hair. Even more so of the stream of important visitors who arrived on their island to stay with him.
They respected his being a painter, living on little money while awaiting fame and fortune. Then when Eden arrived on the island and was swept off her feet by the charm and sexuality of Garfield Barton, the islanders took the romance to their own hearts and thought the more of him for having captured such a beauty, so glamorous and famous. Eden’s and Garfield’s had been a romance that everyone admired, envied. They had been the beautiful people, worldly, who came and went from the island in dramatic romantic meetings and partings: Eden sailing away leaving her love behind to paint and enjoy the seclusion and simplicity of life on Hydra while she toured the world dazzling audiences with her brilliance on the cello.
Occasionally their paths would cross elsewhere when Garfield would leave the island to hustle the art dealers of Paris, London and New York. In New York together, they frequented the cultured circles that appreciated great musicians and painters on the make for stardom. They were creative celebrities with an instant entrée to any party where art met fun head on and the exchange of ideas was heady as the strongest perfume. Adrenaline was in the air and one breathed deep of it to stay alive and in tune with the whirl of New York on the make.
Garfield was the love of Eden’s life. She was flattered by his attentions, his love, their sex life together. She believed totally his
sad tales of how he had been taken advantage of by a crippled wife, a French countess with a famous bitch of a mother who had promised the young couple the world and had delivered a great deal less than Garfield expected. The so-called crippled wife (nothing more than a rheumatic heart) had turned out to be as strong a character as the mother and completely in love with Garfield whom she turned into nothing less than a servant to any and all of her needs. It had been said he used her title as entrée to the rich and famous of European aristocracy while she used him as a decorative crutch and her introduction to the Bohemian world of artists and writers.
By the time Eden had met Garfield he had dumped his first wife but only after having received a substantial settlement, a small flat in Paris and the huge and magnificent house in Hydra. The scandalmongers claimed he was able to get such a settlement because he’d threatened to expose publicly what everyone gossiped about: the mother had been enchanted with Garfield, had had him first for a lover and then married him off to the daughter to keep him in the family.
Eden made herself deaf to such gossip, blind to any aspects of his character that were less than admirable. In New York she watched him hustle the rich ladies who collect paintings, watched him play the role of single, eligible, handsome painter. He put up a great front, saying that he was staying with an old friend and not Eden who was just a passing fancy. Yet everyone knew she was something important in his life.
Garfield Barton was a high-society American gigolo who painted fashionable subjects. He labelled himself artist and the world was charmed by him and his work. Smooth and ingratiating he used himself rather than his talent to climb the art ladder and win the friendship of some of the great painters of their time.
Eden believed him to be a good artist who loved her. In all the years she was passionately devoted to him she could never bring herself to accept that he was the gigolo other people claimed him to be. He had never taken money off her, used or abused the love they had had when they had been together – or so she maintained
to herself and everyone who tried to make her see the affair in its true light.
Hydra had been their haven where the world and Garfield’s flaws were left behind. It was difficult to say when Eden faced the truth about their love affair: one glance too many by Garfield at another older woman with a great deal of money, the realisation that she would always be less than the most important person in his life, the moment he walked away from her when she was in crisis and told her he would be back when she’d straightened herself and her career out.
Standing in her house now, all these years later, looking out on his closed shutters was the first time she could admit to herself that she had fooled herself about their love. To her it had been significant whereas to him she had been just like every other woman he had ever had an affair with. That realisation left her feeling free, as if she had dropped a huge stone she had been carrying for decades: the desperate self-delusion of love.
As Eden walked through to the kitchen where she opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, one for Maria and one for herself, she took a few minutes to ask herself some questions about her affair with Garfield. How much of it had she created to satisfy her own need to be loved as strongly as she had loved him? Had that love really been the great love of her life as she had once believed it to be? Why had she had to come this far in her life to face the truth when it no longer mattered? And it didn’t. She had left him behind more than a decade ago. Never thought of him as a person now, only ever as the abstract embodiment of a great love affair during one of the best times of her life.
After several glasses of wine, Eden settled down to play the cello. Hours passed before she realised she was playing in the dark. Turning on several lamps, she walked through to the upper terrace where her bedroom had been made ready for her. She found a plate of sandwiches and a carafe of water left there by Maria and, lighting the fire, sat in front of it for an hour before she went to bed and slipped into a dream of the stranger who had sent her on this Odyssey of self-discovery.
The next morning she was up bright and early to the sound of
the church bell, a cock crowing from some distance above her house, the screech of a donkey and the clip-clop of his hooves on the stones as he passed down the path to the port. She could smell Maria’s coffee and frying eggs and bacon.
After breakfast in the garden Eden walked the streets of Hydra. Memories of her sexual excesses with Garfield, and how she had been enriched by them when she had been so young and innocent and happy, flooded back to her. What she had hoped for in revisiting the romantic places of her past, that it might validate her old erotic life, was happening. She had not been fooling herself as she had started to fear she might have done.
The Hydriots did of course remember her but few of the expatriates who lived in Hydra happened to be there at present. These were the months when most of them travelled or returned to their native lands for sentimental reunions with their relations. It was almost as if she had her island to herself and that suited Eden just fine. It allowed memories of her past life to invade the present as she climbed the narrow paths up over the spine of the island.
It was early-evening when she returned to her house. She bathed and changed her clothes and walked down a path towards the port to her favourite taverna. Set in a garden several streets in from the moored fishing boats, it boasted the best Greek cooking on the island. After a bear hug from the proprietor and a turn around the kitchen where she looked into every pot and chose her dinner, Eden sat by the open fire on a rickety wooden chair at a table that wobbled with every slash of the knife as she cut the roast lamb on her chipped white plate.